Color Grading and Correction with DaVinci Resolve

It’s really important to have a colour calibrated monitor when colour grading and correcting, there a loads of colour calibrating products available that will get your monitor as close to calibrated as possible. Having a good accurate monitor in the first place will also help along with having 65k lighting in the room and a light coloured backsplash. In this lesson we visit some of the scopes available in the DaVinci software and Rob talks through how to make sense of the information given to us in the RGB parade and vector scope views. These scopes help us greatly when creating a consistently colour matched piece as shown with the swimming pool footage used for the demonstration in this lesson.

AREAS COVERED

• How to analyse shots.
• Waveform monitors
• Vectorscopes
• How to read paradescope
• Demonstration of a balanced image - using paradescope
• Balancing an image using highlights.
• An example of two water scenes and how to match the colours using vectorscopes and waveforms.
• Adjusting shadows, midtones and highlights using black and white video playback.

Preparing and organising your footage can be quite daunting at first, Rob shows you his methods of arranging footage into the media pool prior to getting to work on the colour grading and colour correction.

We visit the edit screen and demonstrate the functionality with the edit section of the DaVinci Resolve software, this application can be used as a start to finished result editor if you wish or an xml / edl file can be loaded into DaVinci Resolve to load all the cuts and appropriate edits from your editing suite of choice (Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere etc)

Later in the lesson Rob talks you through using a master reference shot, how to address any issues such as missing files and how to ensure consistency by sometimes sacrificing small elements of your desired look.

AREAS COVERED

• Comparing shots to a ‘master reference shot’ and matching to the master shot.
• Putting what we’ve looked at into action.
• A brief overview covering some basic footage organisation and import tips for DaVinci
• Mediapool explanation
• Edit page explanation
• XML, EDL explanation
• Referencing to an already edited (and not colour graded) ‘offline video’
• How to sync up missing footage using an offline reference clip with wipes, cuts etc…**
• How to address footage conflicts

We now get to enter the Colour page of the DaVinci Resolve application and start to colour our footage. The parade view and vector scopes are essential for this part so ensure you have them open as demonstrated. Stills of a piece of footage can be used as a reference to aid when matching colour from other shots and Rob explains this and demonstrates in easy steps. DaVinci Resolve operates on a node based workflow that we touch on in this lesson, the node based system can be used in really advanced ways but we’re going to keep things relatively easy to work through until later on.

AREAS COVERED

• Utilising the parade view and vector scope when working in the colour area.
• An overview of the UI layout
• The gallery - grabbing stills to help organisation and quick and easy copy/pasting of colour grades.
• Using stills as reference wipes to ensure consistency between grades - example of water and skin tones given.
• Talking about the node based workflow - naming and explanation of nodes

Power windows give us the ability to create squares, circles, custom shapes and gradients which allow us to make the subject matter in a video ‘pop out’ more or create stylish vignettes.

A demonstration of the power windows and overview of each shape and it’s ideal uses is given, for example the square power window is useful for colour correcting angular shapes such as a TV or advert board in a piece of footage. The circle power window tends to be the most useful and organic looking - great to use for faces and natural shapes.

The blur tab can be used to emulate an out of focus shot and bring our focal point to different areas of a shot. Rob also demonstrates creating a gritty style of colour on a piece of footage to completely change the mood.

AREAS COVERED

• Square power window created and explained.
• Circle power window created and explained.
• Inverting windows / nodes to create vignette and bring the focal point onto a face.
• Blur tab to emulate focus / blur on a video.
• Use of looks as an overall layer - example shows making a gritty style that changes the overall feel of a piece of footage.
• Creating multiple windows - example shows adjustment on multiple faces.
• Creating masks using shapes to isolate areas of a clip to protect areas from being affected by changes.

Here we visit ‘Qualifiers’ for hue, saturation and luminance and learn how to isolate specific areas of footage for adjustment. Rob uses qualifiers on the grass in an example scene to isolate one area of colour and fine tune. This is taken a step further with the use of power windows to fully isolate one section of the frame (and a specific colour) for adjustment. This lesson finishes off with individual correction of offensive saturated colours in a shot by only using the saturation section - great if you had a police car with lights in a shot or similar.

AREAS COVERED

• Highlight mode
• Eye drop Colours - to isolate one area of colour.
• Fine tuning in the hue saturation and luminance area.
• Changing the parameters of a selected area of colour.
• How to isolate a selection to one area of the frame (using power windows)
• Individual correction of offensive saturated colours by only using the saturation section - great if you had a police car with lights in a shot or similar.

Motion tracking when used in conjunction with the power windows and adjustments we’ve learned in the previous lesson can be a very powerful way to track your colour corrections across moving subjects in a scene. Tracking in DaVinci Resolve can be mostly automated using the tracker tab and playing through the selection to analyse the motion in a clip as demonstrated.

Tracking points can be removed by simply drawing a box around the unwanted points and pressing the [Delete] key.

Stabilising footage is also looked at in this lesson and Rob goes through the different options available when treating your shaky footage from different filming scenarios. Pan, tilt, zoom and rotate options are available when stabilising to ensure that the DaVinci Resolve application knows what kind of shot you’re trying to treat. You can choose to ignore or add any of these options - for example if your shot is a panned shot, simply deselect pan and only the vertical axis will be stabilised.

AREAS COVERED

• Motion tracking tab overview.
• Tracking a subject.
• Removing tracking points.
• Stabilising footage.
• Zoom + stabilise to make the clip super steady without the black borders of stabilisation being shown.
• Changing the lighting